Flux Game Studio has, for the second time, brought back a family-known name with Cobra Kai 2: Dojo’s Rising. This is the second game released with this title, the first being Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues, back in 2020 from the same developer. It’s based on the characters and locations we have all learned to love from the franchise.

The story is based on the three Dojo in the Cobra Kai TV show; Miyagi Do, Cobra Kai, and Eagle Fang, and you get to choose which path you would like to follow. You can have three different save games so you can do all three if you choose. All three Dojo have different teachings and different storylines to follow, and you meet the characters you have grown to love in the franchise. The first one I dived into was Miyagi Do, with Daniel Larusso and his daughter Samantha Larusso, to learn the ways of the great Mister Miyagi. The main goal is to recruit as many people around the city as possible in order to get to the All Valley Tournament, the biggest Karate tournament in the valley, and take home the trophy.

The gameplay in this game was what you would expect of a fighting game with lots of button mashing whilst learning all the controls and combo moves that had a super realistic feel to them, and once you start using the special moves, which are various combinations, you learn there is more of a cartoonish feel to the game. The enemies came in great hordes and it was awesome to be able to kick all their arses multiple times, and the “Quick Play” mode allows you to relive awesome battle scenes from the movies and the TV show. The movement could have been tweaked a little to make it feel a little more realistic, but in the grand scheme of things, it was super enjoyable.

This next part took me a little while to get used to, with plenty of button mashing happening on my poor Xbox controller, but after the first scene was finished, I had the basic moves down for my characters. There are lots of different combinations you need to learn which you would expect from a fighting game. You need to learn the different combos whilst also learning how to incorporate the special moves to absolutely destroy your enemies.

I feel like this title would be best suited to controllers and not PC as there is too much going on in the game whilst you are fighting off the hordes of random fighters from the other Dojo trying to mess you up. If you don’t like how the game has its controller scheme set up, you do have the option to change things to how you like them. The tutorial in the first scene teaches you all the basics and makes you do them several times so you get used to the combat and movement system.

The graphical aspect of this title had me more confused than anything. It felt like the developers were attempting to go for a realistic look to all the characters and the surrounding environment, but it felt more cartoonish than it should have in my personal opinion. The different maps you get to explore during the game are done so well, looking so nice and exactly how they’re shown in the movies and TV series. The cartoonish feel suited the game to a tee, with the different special moves you could do which would not suit a realistic-themed game quite as well.

The developers knew what they were doing when organising the different audio for this game. The first thing you get to hear once starting the story mode is a fan favourite by the name of Chosen, and the even better part of this was the voice actors from the TV series. I’m unsure if they were put on to do new dialogue for the game, or if snippets were pulled from the TV series Cobra Kai, but hearing the different voice actors I’ve grown to love in the TV Series was a mood setter from the start.

The background tunes were also set up very well, and depending on what you were doing influenced what it sounded like. If you were in an intense fight, you got that fast-paced action music to set the mood. When you weren’t fighting, it seemed to go back to something super soft at times. The sounds whilst using the special moves were everything you would expect from a fighting game, completely and utterly immersive.

This game has been designed for fans who love the Karate Kid or Cobra Kai titles, as well as anyone that loves their combat games or anyone that just loves an awesome single-player story. Cobra Kai 2: Dojo’s Rising has hours of fun-filled gameplay built into it and has the memories coming back from all the original movies and TV Show that we can all watch on Netflix.

Written by: Hayden Nelson